


antiseptic and tired (i can't remember your face)

by sulfuric



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Post-Canon, Recovery, Safe Haven, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, minho works thru his shit feat thomas sort of working thru his shit, okay these tags really make it seem Edgy but i promise its not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 13:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14619356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: Every night, without fail, he relives it. And every morning, without fail, he wakes up in a sweat, biting his tongue to hold back a scream. It never gets any less terrifying, but as soon as his brain registers that the world isn’t on fire, he’s up and running.orthe one where one of minho’s best friends is dead and the other is in a coma.(he’s figuring it out).





	antiseptic and tired (i can't remember your face)

**Author's Note:**

> ohhhh she back
> 
> this is rly just. my hot take on what happens post-tdc (movie!verse w maybe a few book tidbits sprinkled in there) in terms of minho coping after All ‘O That. there's some talk of suicide re: newt's attempt and all that so please take care of urselves if thats gonna b iffy for u!
> 
> also the title is taken from the song [return by ok go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rWUEtx9No) which is very. a Lot and very much this fic so have the most fun with that

If he’d just run a little faster, then maybe it wouldn’t be like this. 

That’s what it always comes back to, in the end. Whenever something goes wrong, that’s the immediate thought. It was always his flaw - he got comfortable too easily. He was too cocky, too invincible. 

Or so he thought. Turned out not to be true,  _ obviously _ .

Running the maze. He did it every damn day for nearly three years. He learned how to pace himself, and did so comfortably until he became the keeper of the runners. Raised his standards a bit, then got comfortable again. Maybe it was to compensate with the pure, unadulterated  _ dis _ comfort he felt in every other aspect of his life and self in the glade. That crushing, omnipresent  _ feeling  _ of someone watching his every move, all day. The knowledge that they were trapped there. But hey - if he can run well, then good that, right?

Wrong, motherfucker. 

Minho was not a sprinter. Slow-twitch muscle fibres, that was his domain. He could run for  _ hours _ , no problem. But running  _ fast _ ? That’s. Well, that’s just not gonna happen. He’d liked to think it could, back then. Too bad he never actually found out for sure that he was a piece of shit until the moment it mattered the most.

And we all know what that moment is, don’t we?

When he’d been captured by WCKD, Minho swore to himself he’d never let a day go by that he didn’t fight to get free. Just like in the maze, he’d dedicate himself to finding a way  _ out _ . 

And it worked, for the first little while.

Then they started phase three.

It was push-ups and sit-ups in his cell, prison style, for the first little while. It was technically prison, anyway. The routine was maybe the worst part of it. Monotonous, long, and always the exact same. Wake up. Meal. Either medical testing or interrogation by some WCKD nobody - that was the one part he might have to say he almost enjoyed, though. Being blatantly and unapologetically uncooperative was, well, really fucking fun. And there wasn’t really any punishment to it, just WCKD’s sweet, sweet annoyance. 

That changed. 

But in those early days, it was almost harmless. He suspected it had something to do with all his test results: he was probably doing well, better than the others, so they tolerated his bullshit in order to further delude themselves they were even remotely close to finding a cure. 

A cure. A  _ cure _ . That’s a whole other rant, but long story short, there is no fucking cure. 

Anyway. Tests, interrogations, sitting around, meals, whatever. Always alone. WCKD had their machine, and the grease monkeys were definitely getting paid more than minimum wage.

But they couldn’t keep it running like this for long. Someone was bound to slip up somewhere, someday, somehow. And when that day came, Minho was going to be  _ ready _ . He was going to find something sharp. One of the guards was going to get distracted for a second too long. He was going to find a way out, a way back to his friends. 

He’d seen too many people he cared about stop trying. He’d seen what a lack of hope could  _ do  _ to people. He wasn’t about to let that happen to him.

Then, a month in: the repercussions started rolling in. It was the meals, at first. A day full of being hooked up to sensors where he was sent back to his cell instead of the cafeteria. He got breakfast the next day, no problem. But then, a couple days later - he  _ might  _ have jumped across the table and broken WCKD dude #89’s nose when it was insinuated that it was Minho’s fault his friends had died. The doors were open not a second later, Minho dragged away.

Three days had passed before he saw a person (or any food, for that matter) again. 

It got a lot worse after that.

Somewhere around day sixty (it got harder and harder to keep track) they started phase three. It was a machine he’d never seen before, a lot scarier looking than the others. There were a lot of sensors, which, honestly, almost (almost)  _ relieved  _ Minho at that point. Anything was better than another blood test (though, he would soon discover, this was a two for one special). 

This was the real turning point - the moment he realized that WCKD had the power to literally change his world around him, to trap him back in the glade or the maze or wherever they saw fit, all while keeping him right in their clutches. It’s the moment that he realized that his own eyes, his own ears - even his skin, his touch - couldn't be trusted. Once he got hooked up to that machine and they put him in whatever nightmare they saw fit for that day, there was no way of telling what was real or not. Hell, they could have just put him in there once and left him to create brain waves or patterns or immune juice or whatever the hell it was they were after,  letting him believe that his time back in his shitty bed, the cafeteria, the interrogations - were real. 

The fight goes out of him pretty quickly after that.

 

(Even later, in the Safe Haven, he has moments where he studies the line where the sky meets the sea, waiting for the seams to suddenly cease to match up. He waits for everyone to suddenly turn to look at him, for random impossibilities to take place just so he can prove that it’s not real, he’s not really there, and none of  _ this _ \- the maze, the scorch, everything after that - ever happened, that it’s all been on big experiment from the start. He almost thinks it would be easier that way, if everything he ever lost he didn’t  _ really _ lose, the people he loves just fabricated, WCKD stock fed into his brain in order to fill the spaces.

He lets himself believe it would be easier, anyway.)

  
  


So, you know. Running, and all that.

 

By the time Newt and Thomas had come to rescue him (and mind you, he’s still half convinced that that, and all of this, all of  _ this _ , is just another sickening simulation) his physical abilities had been watered down to all but that of a vegetable. And like, not even a good vegetable. Cauliflower, maybe. (He vaguely recalls the fact that he hates cauliflower, quite passionately, despite not being able to ever remember eating some, or the taste of it. From an earlier, better life, he supposes, but now that’s neither here nor there.) 

He’s a shittier, denser version of broccoli and his legs feel like they’re going to snap as he sprints back to the berg, Gally having no trouble keeping up behind him. And he might just be annoyed at that if it wasn’t the literal apocalypse going down around them, but, alas. He runs and he runs and he runs, through gunfire and explosions and mobs of cranks, not for one minute giving a second thought to how easily any of those aforementioned things could kill him, at any second. There’s only one thing in his mind, consuming his consciousness, driving him forward: Newt. 

 

But of course it’s not enough. It was never enough.

 

Minho’s seen a lot of his friends die. Good people, gone for no good reason. Taken by despair, by illness, by lightning, by cranks. By WCKD. He’s almost -  _ almost _ \- taught himself to become numb to it by now, especially after his most recent stint at WCKD. It’s easier that way - less of him is torn away and left to rot with his fallen friends. 

But as he sinks to his knees, serum hitting the ground, Minho feels every inch of his being ripped to shreds. 

 

What comes next, between the end of the world and the boat, is a hazy blur that Minho doesn’t care to recall. There’s the vague memory of knowing Frypan and Brenda are there, and yelling, his own voice. Brenda’s eyes, wide and wet. Tunnels. Being on a berg. It gets a bit clearer once they get to Thomas, but the memory doesn’t feel like his own. Like he’s floating above it, watching it all, instead of watching from his own body. 

He doesn’t mind.

Maybe the one, single miracle of the night is Minho spotting Thomas and Teresa on that roof, collapsed and bloodied (what blood belongs to who, Minho doesn’t dare let himself wonder). He’d been at the window, staring but not seeing, familiar numbness setting in, when he’d seen the shape of them and just  _ knew _ . He and Thomas were always losing and finding each other again, through the worst of everything - and maybe _ that _ was the miracle of it all. 

They end up saving him but not Teresa, who promptly dies after all but forcing Thomas to make it out of there alive. Despite everything she put him through, Minho feels a small pang of sadness for the girl as the building falls out underneath her. Maybe she really did believe she was doing the right thing.

He sure fucking hopes so. 

It’s awful to say, but if they had to only get one out of two, he’s happy it’s Thomas. He has a gunshot wound which is, to say the least, alarming, and Minho feels his chest tighten and his throat close all over again before Brenda pushes him and Frypan away, further into the belly of the berg. They sit and they sob and they stare at the wall and they shake, and they definitely don’t look at the body bag to their left or the body, sans bag, to their right. 

Minho doesn’t believe in any sort of god, but he prays to every damn one of them that they’re fast enough this time. 

  
  


Newt always hated the deadheads, said they gave him the creeps. Wasn’t right, to have that much death just. Right there, so close to them, where they ate and slept and worked. He knew there wasn’t much else to do with ‘em, but still. Like most things, he didn’t have a problem in voicing his opinion. And like most things, there were always heads nodding along, agreeing. And again, like with most things: Minho was one of them, nodding along to whatever Newt had to say. He’d nod his way into gunfire, if that’s what Newt wanted. 

(He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let himself think about it.)

But with that matter-of-fact disgust there was always something else - a strange kind of longing? almost. Fascination? maybe - with it, whenever it was discussed. A small, miniscule shift in the eyes. Fucking hard to see, but eventually Minho learned how to catch it. Learned how to notice the way he got quiet for awhile afterwards.

They usually slept in the same hammock on nights like those.

But, most of the time it was just the disgust, the visceral discomfort. Like Newt couldn’t stand to be near death. Showed up in the scorch, too, with the cranks. “Bloody awful”, he always said. Cringed whenever they saw one. If Minho was a little bit meaner, he’d have made fun of the guy for being such a wuss. But god, if he’d  _ known _ . He wonders, if Newt knew, somehow.

Sometimes, Newt would have to leave the room if they’d talk about the most recent glader to kick the bucket. Wouldn’t go near the deadheads; always made someone else get the fertilizer. But then, other times, it was like death was an old friend. A familiar face - the way he crouched down and handed Winston the gun, as if he  _ understood _ , which Minho guesses he did, and then would, again, even more so. 

 

It’s funny, the way people can contradict themselves like that.

It makes Minho sick.

 

It’s the third day on the boat when the smell begins to be a problem, and they let Newt’s body sink into the ocean.

He hated the deadheads, but he loved the ocean. Any kind of water, really, but the ocean - that was it. It was one of those nights where they lay side-by-side that he first told Minho, in a whisper, after slowly emerging from that familiar slow-moving haze.

“I want to go see the ocean.”

“Oh?”

“Mm.”

A million possible responses ran through Minho’s mind, most of them questions. He bit his tongue, treading carefully. Newt still wasn’t entirely back from wherever he went on those kind of nights, eyes wide and dark, unfocused. 

Newt continued without further pressing. “I don’t… entirely remember, but, I think I lived near the ocean, once.” He smiled a bit then, shifting slightly. “I’d quite like to go back there.”  _ and away from here _ hung off the end, not needing to be said. 

“Good that,” Minho replied softly, making a promise to himself right then and there that once he got them out of this place, he’d find Newt the nearest ocean. He’d give him all the water in the world.

 

So it’s not the same thing, but. It’s the kind of thing they have to convince themselves is maybe, in some universe, close to being enough.

(It’s absolutely, most certainly not.)

But somewhere deep in Minho, past all the guilt and the anger and the hurt, a small voice tells him that it’s exactly what Newt would have wanted. And maybe someday he’ll listen to that voice and take solace in that fact.

(That day is absolutely, most certainly not today.)

  
  


They make it to the Safe Haven, which is about as dumb as a name as Minho’s ever heard. If he had any semblance of life left in him he might have laughed about it, or even made some kind of snarky joke, but instead he just stands there and pretends to listen to Vince as he gives out building assignments that Minho has not a single intention of carrying out.

He gets away with it. Nobody tells him off when he spends the entirety of his days by Thomas’ bedside, waiting for him to be done with his coma. He’s getting better. That’s what the doctors (if you can call them that) say when they come in, each of them giving Minho the same sad, fascinated sort of look. As if  _ he  _ was the trainwreck. It’s probably because he’s one of the WCKD kids, but still. It’s fucking annoying. He’s not their tragedy.

And maybe it’s one too many  _ Hey, you okay? _ ’s or a lingering, concerned look from a complete fucking stranger, or just. Everything, catching up with Minho and finally  _ registering  _ in his brain that this is his life, this is what he’s been through, what he’s lost, what he has left - because it’s another morning in paradise when he finally just  _ snaps. _

One of the munies - the Not Captured/Tortured/Experimented On/Traumatized/Etc By WCKD People - hands him a bowl of oatmeal and a sad, pitying smile. It’s that same, godawful look he’s been getting from  _ everyone  _ lately, even his own friends. As if it’s some sort of unspoken fact that  _ he’s  _ doing way worse than the rest of them. It’s like the facial equivalent of the word  _ sorry _ , and frankly, Minho is tired. It’s not like anyone gets all bothered about Frypan crying into their stew. Even fucking  _ Teresa  _ had the decency to pretend not to notice his obvious dysfunction that only got worse each of the few times she met with him.

So, anyway. He toss-shoves the oatmeal away from him, standing abruptly from the bench, nearly knocking it over in the process. Everyone falls silent around him as he trudges away, shrugging off Jorge’s concerned  _ hermano _ . And yeah, maybe it’s kind of (very) melodramatic and kind of (very) not fair of him to take it out on some poor munie, but they all think he’s a nervous wreck anyway; he might as well let them think they’re right.

Or something like that.

 

He makes his way through camp and a funny memory strikes him:

 

It was in the early days of the maze, before they really had a good system figured out. Minho was tasked with training Ben to become a runner, the first trainee picked out after the original group of runners was established. While he eventually ended up being one of the strongest out of all of them, those early days were not great - the kid wasn’t exactly what Minho would call a quick learner.

It had been a particularly agonizing day, and Minho had just gotten back to the map room. Normally, he’d stick around to supervise Ben’s subpar mapping skills, but today that was just too much for Minho to handle. Leaving the kid to his mediocrity, (which Minho’s probably gonna have to go back and fix later anyway, ‘cause he doesn’t know what stepping back means) he huffed and puffed his way back towards the glade, getting all worked up about nothing. But then Newt rounded the corner, cheeks still red from running the maze, corner of his lips ghosting upwards at the sight of Minho.

“Well, someone looks pissy,” he says with a laugh, and just like that, Minho  _ isn’t _ . 

“Shut up,” he replies, but there’s no bite to it. His mood is completely gone.

 

Now that the situation’s reversed, (Newt very much gone, mood very much here) Minho’s not finding it so funny. In fact, he finds it so ridiculously unfunny that he stomps (we’re on to stomping, now) past his normal grouch cool-off spot at the shoreline and heads toward the mountains, east of camp. No one tries to stop him this time, and he just keeps going. He breaks into a jog when he gets onto the grass, then a full-out run when he reaches the base of the mountain. 

After ten minutes of faster-than-normal running on a forty-five degree incline, his lungs really start to burn. But he keeps going, pushing himself faster. Faster. If only he’d gone just a little bit faster. He doesn’t see the path or the trees or the ocean below, just city and concrete and flames. He pushes faster still, legs on fire with the rest of the world. 

He’s made it a good chunk of the way up now, and breathing is beyond him. Just a little bit faster. Just a little bit faster. He keeps it up for hours until he finally reaches the top of the mountain, a small clearing in which he promptly collapses. There’s no dead body at the end of his journey this time around, but there might as well be. 

It takes a while for him to regain feeling in his limbs but once he does, Minho drags himself up to a sitting position and looks out over the ocean and their camp below. The water stretches on eons farther than the scorch ever did, farther than he can comprehend, waves crashing onto the shore. Without the sound, it almost looks peaceful. Not far from the beach is their Safe Haven, shelters and huts scattered along the grass with no particular organization to it. If he really squints, he can make out the medical tent where Thomas is. Beyond the camp is more beach and more mountains, but past that Minho has no idea what there is. He supposes they’ll venture out and explore it someday. For now, their little paradise is enough to handle on its own.

It’s one of the most beautiful things Minho’s ever seen, and he doesn’t deserve it. Not even a little bit. Right now, he should be hooked up to torture machine #42 back at WCKD and Newt should be here, sitting on the beach and watching the waves for hours on end. It’s the least fair thing in the entire world, and once he really lets himself think about it, Minho starts to cry for the first time since he’d seen Newt’s body, WCKD knife buried to the hilt. 

He sits and cries for what feels like hours, until his head is heavy and pounding and his throat raw. He feels like a dumb little kid, throwing a tantrum because  _ it’s not fair _ , but fuck it - he never  _ got  _ to be a kid. None of them did. If he wants to sob on a mountain about his best friend dying, then he will do just that, thank you very much.

He considers, once it hits late afternoon and the sun (the fucking  _ sun _ ) is starting to falter, launching himself off the mountain. It’s a little dramatic, yeah, but it is a genuine thought that goes through his head. ‘Cause, really, what right does he have to be here? He’d made peace with the fact that he was likely going to die in the hands of WCKD. That his friends would escape and end up in some paradise - the one he’d always imagined was a touch more tropical than this, but it works either way - and have the happy ending they deserved. And always,  _ always _ , Newt was a part of that happy ending. He’d probably had it the worst out of all of them - Minho shivers when he remembers that day back in the glade, rounding a corner in the maze to stop dead in his tracks, worst nightmare lying in a heap in front of him. 

(If you’d ever asked him what his nightmare was, he’d say grievers. But that was always a lie. He’d faced his worst nightmare, gathered it up into his arms, and told it to hang on.)

It would be some kind of poetic symmetry bullshit if he died on this cliff, right? He tries to solidify the metaphor or whatever but there’s too many thoughts racing in his mind, too much energy pulsing through him all of a sudden. Newt died because of him, it’s only fair that he dies too? Or something like that? Like, on the scale of the universe and the cosmic Balance of things, this is what makes sense, right? To sacrifice himself the way that Newt tried to? 

The longer he wrestles with the logistics of it, the more the moment deflates, energy sapped. He ends up sitting by the edge of the cliff, legs crossed, throwing pebbles off of it. He feels, among many other aforementioned things, stupid. Of course he’s not gonna throw himself off the cliff. In addition to Newt probably killing him all over again in the afterlife for it, it would just create more of a hassle in the grand scheme of things. First, it’d probably take a couple days before anyone found him. By that point, he’d be way beyond the acceptable level of corpse smelly. And what would they do with his body? It’s not like they could just dump him in the ocean like they’d done for Newt; he’d just wash back up the next day. And it’s not like he’s been helping out with duties at camp in the first place, but still, they’d be down one person. With how many people they have, it makes a difference.

So, hmm. Yeah. Maybe best to, well,  _ not _ die, even though Minho feels like that’s what he deserves at the moment. With a big sigh, he stretches onto his back. His head still hurts. He thinks about Thomas, about how (according to Vince) he would stop at absolutely nothing to get Minho back from WCKD. He’s still not sure if he believes that Thomas spent  _ months  _ plotting and planning and arguing about Minho’s impending rescue, but knowing how stubborn that kid was? It seems more likely than not. He thinks about Thomas, lying unconscious in that bed for almost two months now, bullet wound slowly healing itself. Thomas, who took a bullet trying to get Minho out of WCKD. Thomas, who was willing to die to keep Minho safe.

Minho decides, looking up at the clouds, that he’s gonna do Thomas a solid and not try to die immediately after he got shot and almost died trying to save him.

But that doesn’t mean he’s gonna go back down and be all ready to save the world. No, he’s gonna stay right where he is and mope for a little while longer. He’s pretty sure he’s entitled to that, at least.

He lies there and he thinks some more, thinks about Newt and thinks about Thomas and thinks about Newt And Thomas. There’s the whole thing of the necklace - it was in Thomas’ pocket when they got him from the roof, and Minho’s about eighty-three percent sure it was Newt’s. He thinks he remembers seeing Newt rip it off his own neck, forcing Thomas to take it. He thinks he remembers seeing it on Newt before that, vaguely remembers wondering what it was, where he got it. But a lot of his memories of that night are tainted, warped, fuzzy, so Minho doesn’t completely trust himself on that.

But still, part of him knows. Newt gave that necklace to Thomas, and not him, so he doesn’t dare to do anything with it. He does keep it on him - it didn’t feel right having it stay out on the little table beside Thomas’ bed, out there in the open where anyone could just grab it. It stays in his pocket most of the time; he doesn’t feel like he should have it around his neck. He never opens it, never does anything more than just feel it in his pocket, making sure it’s there. He owes both of them that - he knows what they had, the two of them, was special. Something different. What  _ he  _ and Newt had was, too.

Maybe that was just the effect Newt had on people. 

 

Once Minho decides he’s moped/brooded/lied on the ground for long enough, he decides it’s time to make an actual effort at rejoining society, at least somewhat. That happens decently early the next morning, and his stomach is all but screaming at him as he makes the long trek (walking) down the mountain. Maybe, if he’s nice, he can get some oatmeal. 

 

People are a little more careful around him after that, well,  _ episode _ , you could call it, (Minho doesn’t) and while every second of the cautious smile plus “how are you?” in  _ that  _ tone of voice routine makes him wanna flip a table just a little bit more each day - he soldiers through. He sits at all the meals, he goes to all the bonfires, he does his part helping out with the building. He even makes  _ small talk _ :

It’s his second day back from the mountain when he saunters out to the builder’s area, more than ready to throw himself into a physical task. It’d been a long time since he’d done anything remotely physically taxing (if you excluded sprinting up a mountain and getting electrocuted for months) and Minho knows it’s going to suck, but at least it’s going to be  _ something _ . He tries to insert himself into the group as subtly as he can while assignments are being given out, but fails.

“Well, finally, you shank,” Gally mutters, smirking as he keeps on looking straight ahead.

Minho rolls his eyes. “Hey, pretty sure I saw a spear back there.”

He has no idea if the joke is gonna land or if it’s gonna hit a sore spot, but it comes out of his mouth so fast he doesn’t have time to exercise his better judgement. Luckily, Gally just snorts and claps Minho on the shoulder. “Good to have you back, man.”

 

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

 

Slowly, his friends start to talk to him again. Funnily enough, it was the people who cared the most about him that were the most apprehensive to approach him after everything. Maybe it’s because the munies didn’t really have any idea of the extent of WCKD’s methods, but they sure had no trouble being either obnoxiously invasive or obnoxiously awkward, or, even better,  both. And it’s probably definitely at least sixty percent his fault for isolating himself as soon as they got to the Safe Haven, ( _ Safe Haven _ \- still, gag) but the very small amount of gladers left standing really did seem set on keeping their distance. Or, giving him distance. Whatever. Once he starts forcing himself to be a part of whatever the hell they’ve created on that beach, Minho’s people start letting themselves be around him again. 

Frypan sits with him at dinner - Minho sticks around once everyone’s done, waits for Fry to finish. Sometimes Gally joins them, offering the day’s latest stories. He always seems to be in the know, somehow. He claims it’s a certain particularly gossipy source among the builders, but Minho’s not so sure - whenever he’s with him, there always seems to be two or three random people waving or shouting out Gally’s name with a smile as they pass by. Gally says it’s ‘cause he’s a  _ builder _ , and he gets to know people when he has to fix their crap, but secretly, Minho thinks it’s just ‘cause he has  _ friends. _ Not that he’d ever tell Gally that, though - doesn’t want his ego blowing up from thinking people actually like him. 

He even finds out that that Aris kid is really funny, but in that deadpan sort of way. Sonya - the blonde one, Minho is like ninety percent sure - is really, really sweet, and Harriet is maybe the most badass person Minho’s ever met, other than Brenda. The three of them sometimes join him, Fry, and Gally at the picnic benches after dinner, a quiet kind of glader meeting. Sometimes it’s so loud that Minho can barely hear himself think,everyone  laughing and screaming across the table. He likes those nights. They help him to forget everything he was running away from that day on the mountain, weeks ago now. 

 

Other times, he’s not so lucky. 

 

It’s late one night, about a month and a half post- _ episode _ , when the fire is dying and it’s just him, Brenda, and a few others he doesn’t care to identify left awake. 

It had been one of the livelier bonfires they’d had, but as people left to get their rest for the night and the fire slowly extinguished itself, the atmosphere had taken a seriously somber, pensive turn. Brenda’s beside him, arms wrapped around her knees.

“You can talk to me, you know,” she says softly, the first words spoken in quite a while. After a second of hesitation, she adds, “I’ve lost people too.”

Before he can think, Minho snaps his head around and his face contorts into an awful,  _ awful _ look and the way Brenda’s own expression falls just about kills him. He stops himself before any ugly words can escape him and dick-punch Brenda any more than he already has. Because, really, he doesn’t know anything about Brenda’s life before they met her. She has Jorge, and that’s it. Who’s Minho to assume she’s never had anyone else? She’s older than he is, and lived in the Scorch her whole life. 

All of a sudden, his mouth tastes very sour. He hates himself for being so short-tempered because he  _ likes _ Brenda, thinks they could actually be pretty good friends if he wasn’t so, like, fucking  _ traumatized  _ by everything that’s ever happened to him. He starts to apologize but she just gives him this small smile that seems to say  _ It’s okay, I get it _ , and reaches into her pocket. 

“I had a brother,” she says, opening up that little tin he sometimes sees her clutching and shows him the inside. And Minho lets his eyes adjust, blinking at the picture but then he  _ recognizes  _ it because  _ that’s George  _ and George died so he gets up without a word and goes and throws up in the ocean as if it could wash away what he just saw and everything he’s ever fucking seen.

A couple of minutes later, he’s sitting in the damp sand with an empty stomach and his head in his hands. He lets the waves lap at his feet and eventually Brenda comes over, quietly, carefully, and sits down beside him, silent. A long time passes just like that until she takes a small breath, exhaling her heart.

“Did you know him?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he-”  
“Yeah.”

 

Impossibly, things kind of start to look up after that night. He and Brenda have a bit more of an understanding between them - he starts being more cognizant of the fact that he’s not the only one still suffering, and she becomes the only person (other than Gally, maybe) who doesn’t tiptoe around him anymore. She’s definitely the only person who’s not afraid to call him out on his shit. He thought he’d be annoyed, but he’s not. He even doesn’t mind the horde of kids that he sometimes catches lurking around her, anxiously hovering as if she’s their mom. One day, she explains it to him: 

“Oh, yeah, those are my kids. I broke them out of WCKD on a stolen bus and we almost all died, so I think they got attached.” She says it as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, and Minho makes a mental note to get her to elaborate on that whole  _ stolen bus  _ and  _ almost died  _ thing some other time.

The medics - one of which, he realizes now, looks hauntingly like Jeff, which is maybe why he had been so quick to snap at the poor kid - tell him that Thomas is probably going to be waking up soon. His bullet wound is (apparently) completely healed, and his colour is looking better. At least that’s what Jeff 2.0 says, ‘cause to Minho, Thomas looks just as in-a-coma as he did two months ago. 

Regardless, it’s then that he decides to push himself to at least  _ act _ like a normal person so that when he does wake up, Minho can be the functional, supportive friend that Thomas is probably expecting and not this hot mess that he currently is. 

  
  


When Minho was back in WCKD, he slept. He slept a lot. At the time, he’d rationalized to himself that he was preserving his strength, waiting until the day he’d escape. Realistically, it was probably because of whatever drugs WCKD was pumping him full of. It was also probably the drugs that caused him not to dream - or at least, not to remember his dreams. 

Now, it’s a different story. 

At first, he’d tried the whole  _ be asleep as long as possible so that you’d don’t have to be awake and face everything that’s happened  _ thing, and for a little while, it’d worked. But then, probably as whatever WCKD put in him made its way out of his system, Minho started to get his dreams back. Long, vivid dreams.

Terrible, terrible dreams.

It’s always Newt. Most of the time, it’s of that night in the city: the black veins branching up his neck and over his face, pulsating thickly. The look in his eyes when he said goodbye - ‘cause that’s what it was, really. Newt knew. Then the running - always the running. Sometimes, in the dreams, he never makes it, running the burning city like a maze.

Sometimes he’d get lucky and have them start out by disguising themselves as good dreams. The glade was a popular setting - probably cause it was the only place that actually contained any of Minho’s  _ good  _ memories, but that’s beyond the point. It was often just glimpses, flashes of moments that were equally likely to be a real memory or something completely  fabricated: running the maze, drinking Gally’s moonshine at the bonfire, or the rare nap under a tree in the glade. Newt, by his side. 

But always, at some point or another, it turns sour. It’s always the knife, sticking out of his chest like a beacon:  _ you’re too late.  _ Minho will never -  _ never _ \- forget the sound it made when Vince pulled it out of Newt’s chest. 

Every night, without fail, he relives it. And every morning, without fail, he wakes up in a sweat, biting his tongue to hold back a scream. It never gets any less terrifying, but as soon as his brain registers that the world isn’t on fire, he’s up and running. 

It’s usually around dawn that he awakens, padding silently through the camp until he hits the sand, sprinting down the shoreline. Sometimes, if he’s lucky, the stars will still be out to accompany him on his run. They never had stars in the glade, but for some reason Newt knew about the constellations and their stars - always said Polaris was his favourite, whatever that was. Minho always searches for it (just how Newt taught him:  _ Find the one that looks like a pot, that’s the Big Dipper. Follow the two stars at the end, Merak and Dubhe - don’t look at me like that, Min, I don’t know how I know this, I just do - follow them straight up and you’ll hit Polaris. That’s the north star. _ ) but there’s no pot in the sky, just random dots with no correlation. That’s how Minho feels each morning, scattered feelings and thoughts with no way to rationalize or link them together. 

If Newt were here, he’d have taken care of both the stars and Minho long ago.

But, as is reverberating through Minho’s skull in every moment, he’s  _ not _ . So, he runs. He keeps his eyes trained on the horizon and runs faster, always faster. This isn’t like the maze; he’s not going for endurance here. He sprints himself to exhaustion, then collapses in the ocean as the sun rises and waits to be washed away.

 

On the bad days, he stays there lying in the sand for about an hour, unable to move. Usually it’s Brenda that wakes up first after him, and he’s grown accustomed to the outline of her making its way down the shore with the sunrise. Most of the time they talk - camp gossip, whatever antics her horde of adopted children are up to these days, stories from the glade or the scorch - but sometimes the silence lies thick between them, Minho’s tongue heavy in his mouth. 

On those days - the really bad ones - Brenda will sit with him for a while, hand resting gently on top of his in the sand. She doesn’t need to say anything for Minho to know that she’ll cover for him with the other builders while he goes up to the mountains that day. There’s this one spot he found on this third trip up, a forest of sorts. And if he’s there at  _ just _ the right time, late in the afternoon, and he’s sitting against this one tree looking at  _ just _ the right angle, it looks almost identical to the spot Newt used to meet him in the glade, away from the Homestead and everything else-

_ Their _ place. 

And he can sit there for a minute, maybe a couple, at most, and let himself believe that Newt is just about to emerge from the behind the trees, mischievous smile lighting up his face just like it always did. Sometimes, if he really concentrates, he can even make himself hear the distant yelling and laughing of the guys back in the glade (earlier, happier days). 

But it never lasts. The clouds come in and it’s all wrong - they never had clouds in the glade. He always leaves right after that, the moment ruined by reality.

  
  


Finally, Thomas wakes up.

He’s sitting with Jorge, the two of them whittling down stalks of bamboo (for a new shelter, but Minho tells Gally with a wink that it’s just for him) when his peripherals pick up a familiar figure. He stands immediately, pure instinct more than anything else. But then he looks, and he almost doesn’t believe what he sees -  _ Thomas. _

If Minho was more well-adjusted and less, well,  _ something _ , he’d probably be a lot happier in this moment. But even though he’s (relatively) adjusted, he’s not  _ well _ -adjusted, and he’s definitely a lot more  _ something _ \- what that is he’s not entirely sure of yet, just knows it’s something bad, something off, something not right - so he isn’t happy but  _ something _ as Thomas spots him, heading over to the small group that’s gathered behind Minho. 

And all of a sudden Minho’s ashamed, of all things, so his feet stop working and he grounds himself to that spot, a couple metres in front of his friend.  _ This is as close as you deserve to get to him right now _ , a voice in the back of his head chimes. His eyes fall to the ground for just a second, letting out a heavy sigh. Thomas’ face is unreadable - was he going to be  _ mad?  _ Minho hadn’t considered it before, but if anyone had the right to be mad at him, it was Thomas.

He swallows thickly, and waits for Thomas to do something. It’s a couple of seconds (eternities) later when his lips wobble into a watery half-smile and engulfs Minho in a crushing hug, squeezing any doubts on the standing of their friendship out into the wind. If either of them let out a couple of quiet sobs, nobody says anything about it. 

 

Later that night, there’s a big bonfire - a celebration. Happy-waking-up-from-your-coma party. Vince, despite his apparent qualms with Thomas over the months Minho had spent in WCKD - the  _ apparent _ part coming from Brenda’s retellings of everything, though Minho had a hard time telling when she was overdramatizing things for the fun of it, especially because she loved to mess with him - had a lot more respect for Thomas than he’d let on. When some of the older munies and Right Arm people suggested something like this, earlier on, he’d denied. He’d been persistent, even, in making sure that they waited until Thomas woke up to have something big, something official. Thomas was the reason they were even there - even  _ alive _ \- in the first place.

Vince gives his speech, and afterwards, Minho sits with Thomas, alone. 

“This is gonna be a good home for us,” he says, and for the first time, he almost believes it. 

There’s a couple seconds too long of delay before Thomas responds - “Yeah,” he offers, clearly lying. It’s in that moment that Minho sees so much of his own self in Thomas - defeated, resigned, guilty. It’s like a punch to the gut, seeing how much he blames himself - how he won’t even look at Minho, staring out into the sea of people, then down at his hands. It must make his gut wrench to see people  _ celebrating _ , laughing and dancing and playing music. It hasn’t been four months for Thomas; it’s been a day. 

“You had this on you while you were passed out,” Minho offers, pulling the necklace from his pocket. He searches for the recognition in Thomas’ eyes as he takes it, but finds nothing but more  _ hurt _ . “Figured I’d keep it safe for you.”

“Thanks, Minho,” Thomas says, not looking thankful at all. He looks like he just got handed a dead body. If it was Newt’s necklace, then it might as well have been.

Minho wishes he could take Thomas by the hand and scream  _ it wasn’t your fault  _ until it gets through his thick skull and registers as the truth, but he knows he can’t do that. He knows that Thomas is gonna have to sulk around while people are working and yell at his friends and throw up on the shore. He’s gonna have to work through everything, just like Minho did. And Minho knows that he’s done all he can for tonight, so he claps a hand onto Thomas’ back and with a rather lame “See you out there,” he leaves. 

 

In those early days, when Thomas being there in the glade was new and weird, when he and Newt had seemed to connect instantly - he’d always thought: how did they get there so fast? Minho had known Newt for two years - and two years is a long time. His entire life that he could remember, in fact. 

Was it jealousy, that brought on that short bitter spell when Minho thought of Thomas in those days? Probably. He got over it quickly, though - bitterness was never really his thing. Well, that’s not quite true, but it was when it came to Newt. He was kind of the one good thing he had, so early on Minho had made a pact not to let his heart grow tight and wither whenever he caught a glimpse of him across the glade, laughing at somebody else’s joke. _ Get over yourself, Min. you know what you have. _

But what if he doesn’t have that one good thing anymore? Minho’s not stupid, he knows he has a lot of people that care about him - Fry, Brenda, Thomas. Even Jorge, maybe. Possibly Gally, too. And the girls from the other maze, and Aris? He’s working on it. 

And maybe this is hitting him so hard right now because giving Thomas the necklace just reminded him of Newt - something tangible, something he could hold in his hands that belonged to  _ him _ , even though he wasn’t even here anymore. The past few weeks he’s allowed himself to get lost - not to forget, but to push it back back back where he couldn’t feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears whenever he didn’t have something to do or think about right at that moment. He’s been keeping his head down, putting himself into whatever work Vince or the others needed him for. 

And now, he’s been hit with reality once again.

Something about carving Newt’s name into that stone feels like he’s losing everything. It feels final - it feels  _ wrong,  _ because this isn’t how any of it was supposed to go.  When Minho imagined getting them out of the maze, he imagined Newt right by his side. Newt was supposed to grow old. He was supposed to grow  _ old _ . It’s not right to be etching his name alongside Chuck’s and Winston’s and all these other people WCKD had taken away.

He thought he’d made some kind of progress, but the tremors racking through him clearly say otherwise. It almost makes him angry. At the bonfire, he’d almost felt  _ happy _ . For the first time in months, he’d smiled and laughed with his friends for more than twenty seconds. And now, he’s back at a low, Newt’s name pulsing in his veins. 

He sits on the sand upshore, away from the fire. Polaris still evades him. 

  
  


Time passes, somehow. Thomas slowly, shakily, integrates himself into the routine of the camp. No one is doing great, technically, but there are times when the weight of everything they’ve been through feels heavier than they can handle.

 

Early one week, Brenda mentions it’s almost been a year since they’ve made it to the Safe Haven.

(It’s been a bad week.)

For the most part, he and Thomas are okay. Thomas is seeming to finally be coming out of the worst of his grief, and Minho’s given him the appropriate space. But still, there are times when they get on each other’s nerves.

It normally happens on bad weeks.

It’s Wednesday and Thomas is pissing him off. About halfway through the day, Minho notices that the dude hasn’t changed his shirt in like, four days. This might not be concerning if he was, you know,  _ washing  _ it, but if he gets a little closer Minho can tell that that’s definitely not the case. 

To his credit, Thomas is at least being more social than he normally is. The two of them and Gally are having some banter which, truth be told, is not entirely friendly because they’re both on edge and Thomas says something particularly grating and Minho. just.

“How about you change your fucking clothes before you come over here and annoy me again, Thomas.”

It takes a second or two for his words to settle, and then Thomas. just.  _ bursts  _ into tears with not a single indication of warning and that is, well - that’s the last thing Minho is expecting in that moment (he thought they got through the random bouts of crying thing, like, two months ago) so he looks to Gally, who quietly and respectfully books it the fuck out of there, and then back to Thomas, who is still absolutely  _ losing _ it. 

Minho immediately forgets whatever dumb petty thing he was pissed at Thomas for and goes over to him, gently sitting him down on the fallen tree they’d eaten their lunch on, pre-meltdown. Thomas complies easily enough so Minho decides this probably isn’t an  _ I hate Minho he’s so mean to me  _ kind of thing and more of a  _ I am deeply traumatized and having a time about it  _ kind of thing.

And he’s just clutching the necklace, fist beating against his chest. Minho can tell he’s spiralling, getting more and more caught up in the mania of it and if he doesn’t stop hyperventilating, he’s probably going to make himself pass out sooner rather than later. 

And there’s a vague voice in the back of his head (memory? reason? common sense? Newt?) that tells him to find some way to comfort Thomas so he kind of just. sits himself there beside his friend and sort of awkwardly holds his shoulder in an attempt to ground him or  _ something  _ like that. He lets him cry it out without the normal “it’s okay, it’s okay” bullshit because, evidently, it’s not. 

Minho waits until the he’s sure whatever this is has, like, levelled out to a steady level of panic before he tries to speak. “Listen, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that would upset you so much and-” he cuts himself off because Thomas only lets out a new round of sobs, raw and without any restraint. Clearly, Minho is not helping.

But then Thomas is shaking his head and hitting his chest and then, finally, between gasps, he gets out something that sounds a lot like “can’t look at it”. Which. doesn’t really help Minho right now, but a terrible, sinking feeling begins to settle into the pit of his stomach while Thomas drops his head into his hands, sobs slowing to deep, ragged breaths. 

Maybe it’s the necklace. Maybe Newt left something inside, like a note, that Thomas can’t bring himself to look at. Maybe it’s just the pendant itself, maybe that was a Thing in those months when Minho was back at WCKD, Thomas and Newt alone, fighting to find him. Maybe something  _ had  _ happened between the two of them. Minho hates himself for the twinge of jealousy that goes through him at the thought, still envious even with Thomas having a complete breakdown here beside him. It’s not like he can  _ ask _ , but god. Maybe that was it. Maybe it’s a Teresa thing. As much as Minho hates her, (and as much as he tries not to) she is - was? - important to Thomas. Maybe-

Minho’s speculations are brought to a stop when Thomas is stripping all of a sudden, which is definitely not something Minho expected to come of this whole thing. But once his shirt is over his head, it is very clear that this is not a happy stripping event. 

When he speaks, Thomas’ voice is hoarse and quiet. “I haven’t, uh. It’s because of this,” he muddles awkwardly through his words, almost ashamed, resting a single finger on top of the pink scar on his chest, right over his heart. It’s small, no more than a couple of centimeters in length. Minho shoots him a questioning look:  _ why _ ? He’s seen the scar before, when it was fresh, just after they’d gotten him from the top of the WCKD complex. He was covered in scratches that night, blood (not necessarily all  _ his _ ) smeared all over him. Minho’s tried to forget it, but failed. Thomas just looks at him, all the chaotic energy of just moments prior completely drained out of him. Sitting there, caved in, wounded, his frame is much smaller than what Minho remembers.

Minho can already tell that he’s really, really not going to like this. “Hey, man-”

“It was Newt.”

Thomas barely whispers it, but the three words ring like sirens in Minho’s head. And it takes a couple seconds of just sitting there and watching the fresh tears forming in Thomas’ eyes before it really clicks -

But then, it clicks.

 

He does not sleep that night.

  
  


Somehow, the days go impossibly by. 

Thomas starts to join him on his runs in the morning. They don’t leave breadcrumbs. Thomas always leaves before Brenda makes her way down the beach, and he always teases Minho about it afterwards. But that’s fine by him, as long as he gets to send a barrage of painfully obvious winks and eyebrow wiggles Thomas’ way whenever Aris is in their immediate vicinity. 

It’s all about balance, this Safe Haven thing. Mornings are for trauma, afternoons for harmless adolescence. Evenings for discussions on how to rebuild humanity, then nights for drinking moonshine and bonfire wrestling.

Over time, he learns how to reminisce without nightmares flashing in front of his eyes in broad daylight - black veins sprawling across Newt’s face, the sterile rooms in WCKD he spent hooked up to machines harvesting his spinal fluids, tanks in the street and bodies flying through the air and the world on fire. He figures out how to isolate the moment he saw Newt and Thomas for the first time the night they rescued him, how to be grateful for the friends he’s had without feeling suffocated by all the ones he’s lost. It never stops hurting, but it hurts a little bit less each day.

He ends up spending a lot of his time sitting by the memorial rock, mouthing the names to himself over and over so that he doesn’t forget.  _ Winston. Ben. Alby. Chuck. Jeff. George. Teresa. Newt.  _ He traces his fingers over the last one, shivers as he remembers the day - the exact moment, actually - he and Newt made their mark on the maze wall, so long ago.

 

“Well, someone sure is important,” Newt mumbles, a quiet chuckle punctuating his statement. He nods up towards Minho’s handiwork, smirking at the obnoxiously large letters carved into the stone.

“At least  _ I’m  _ not gonna be a hunchback once this is over,” Minho quips back. He’s right on that - Newt chose an unfortunate spot on the wall, too low to stand normally and too high to work from his knees, so now he’s trapped himself in this awkward halfway phase. But, at the same time, Minho’s own placement has had him with his arms above his head for the past half hour, so, he’s not one to talk shit (not that that’s gonna stop him from talking shit, anyway).

Newt chooses not to reply just then, but Minho can feel his eyes rolling regardless. The sun burns a little hotter than normal today, and Newt’s ditched his normal linen hoodie in favour of just a tank top. Minho definitely doesn’t notice how muscular his arms are in his peripheral vision, not at all.

A couple of minutes later, Nick’s voice calls out to them from across the glade. “Let’s go, you shanks! Council Hall won’t build itself!”

With a small grunt, Newt unfolds up to his full height. “Well, that was fun,” he says, one hand propped on his hip and the other wiping sweat from his brow. “Later, Minho.”

“You’re done already?”

“Well, y’see, when you make your letters as big as a six year old’s, it takes longer.”

Minho glares down at Newt’s own name - sure enough, the letters are small and neat. He huffs an indignant sigh. “Your name doesn’t have as many letters as mine,” he says, like a child.

“Four versus five. You’re a true hero, really, Minho.” He leans in just a bit, fake sincerity oozing out of him. Then, he breaks into a wide smirk, turning without another word and heading off to go be a productive member of their makeshift society. Minho lets himself watch him walk away, just for a second. 

God, that smile would kill him, someday. 

  
  


It’s moments like these that he chooses to remember, to share. Sometimes, at night, Thomas will find his way to Minho’s hammock and ask, voice soft and far away: “Can you tell me about him?” It’s nights like these that Minho knows exactly where he is (stuck; reliving his and Newt’s worst moments) and what he needs (a reminder; who Newt is and was and will always be, not a monster). Minho will always respond with a “yeah” and Thomas will always climb into the hammock with him, curling around Minho in this hauntingly familiar way. 

It’s almost paralyzing, at first - he could just close his eyes, and he’d be back in the glade, Newt pressed into his side. But he owes Thomas more than that. He owes  _ Newt  _ more than that, so he keeps his eyes open, even when his eyelids are screaming to close, until the scent of Thomas has soaked into him. He’s grateful for that, for this, and for what it represents. Thomas’ early days after waking up had been a lot worse than Minho had expected. It took a long, long time for Thomas to let anyone even get  _ close  _ to touching him, and he often didn’t sleep for days on end. 

Everyday is another step. Towards what, don’t ask. Nobody at the Safe Haven really knows. It’s not like they’re gonna save the human race or anything. Whatever lies in their future, that’s up for fate to decide. All Minho knows is that each day is another step away from WCKD, and that’s more than enough for him. 

 

They all take care of each other. Brenda asks him to tell her about George, and he does. He lets his runs become jogs. He actually gives Frypan feedback on his meals, pointing out the strong and weak points instead of just numbly making his way through half a serving without even stopping to say thanks. He helps Gally with the building plans, laying out a more permanent village set-up than their current huts and hammocks. He learns all the Group B girls’ names - he and Harriet have this game they like to play, one where they keep a running tally of how many times they can catch Thomas and Aris snuggling-without-actually-snuggling at the bonfires: shy hand holds dropped at the first sign of human life, heads gingerly leant onto the other’s shoulder. Whoever has the highest count the next morning wins (Minho, despite his efforts, rarely wins). 

It’s different, than what he had, but it’s starting to feel like a family.

  
  


Minho thinks a lot about when Newt tried to kill himself. He remembers that feeling in his gut that hit him out of the blue, the feeling that something wasn’t right. It led him right to Newt, crumpled on the maze floor. He remembers what he said to him, right there in the maze. That night. The next morning. Every morning after that. That night, in the city, Newt clutching his arm.

_ Just hang on. You hear me? _

He repeats it to himself now, a promise. He whispers it to the ocean, hoping that maybe the undertow will bring it back to Newt.

And he has to hold onto that maybe, somehow, it will. 

 

One morning, he’s bringing a plate of breakfast to Brenda and she looks up at him, sad smile lopsided on her face. He shoots her a look as if to say  _ what’s wrong  _ and she just lets out a sigh. “Two years, today.”

_ Oh.  _ Minho stops, setting the plates down on the porch of her newly constructed cabin. She was always better at remembering dates than him. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I think - I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”

“Do you want me to-”

“No, I think I have to - I gotta-”

“No, no, I get it. Go. I’ll be here.”

And so he goes, heading toward the beach because, really, where else would he go? The five minutes that it takes to get there don’t exist, the words  _ Two years, today,  _ the only thing he’s conscious of. 

‘Cause, y’see, two years is a long time. But two years in paradise seems to have passed him by faster than any of those soft, dewy glade mornings spent speaking softly, shoulders touching for no reason. Two years there, in that life - it felt like and eternity. It still feels like an eternity, like everything that happened inside of those four walls couldn’t have possibly spanned just two measly years. But now, on this day, it marks the point in Minho’s ridiculously messed up life where he’s officially (approximately) lived without Newt for longer than he had with, and, well. That’s not even something he can begin to think about processing right now - maybe later, when two years isn’t a long time and the portion of this life that includes ( _ included _ ) Newt is just a fraction of the whole and the memories of him have that soft sort of haze blanketing them, all thick and dull, little more but gravel and glass. Maybe then he can think about what this shift, this before and after, means, but right now even thinking about thinking about it is. it’s bad.

So, he doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about thinking about it, doesn’t. think, period. He just lets the days carry him impossibly forward like the waves drag him into the ocean, drowning, only to spit him back out to shore, to the Safe Haven where he’s tried so hard to believe he deserves to belong. It’s the push and pull - there are days where he lies comfortably on the sand, even his toes too far for the water to reach. These are the good days. Others, he spends underwater. He wishes - if only it could swallow him whole, take him away and never give him back. These - these are the bad days.

But he has people, here. He has responsibilities. He has promises. 

So, he continues, despite it all.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> mm big yeet  
> i love validation so pls lmk ur thoughts in the comments! i am also on [tumblr](http://00250.tumblr.com)!!


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